Would maragarine by any other name still taste as fake? (I can't believe it's not butter)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	I can't believe it's not butter
Date:	31/10/09 (40 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good for cooking with

Disadvantages: Stupid and misleading brand name; it's very easy to believe it's not butter.

It's always distressing when you find out that a multi-national company better known for manufacturing household products of the laundry detergent / aerosol propellants type (in this particular it's case Unilever, although along similar lines, I believe Reckitt Chemicals may have a foothold in the 'Sara Lee' range of industrially-produced chocolate cakes too) is also responsible for making something that you would otherwise have considered as being food. In this case, the 'dairy spread' / substitute for butter known as 'I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.' Made by Unilever. Who'd have thought.

Well, the clues were pretty obvious really. This is a 'churned' spread, coloured a bright shade of artificial yellow that has a small amout of dairy-based content - to give it an 'authentic buttery taste' - but the overwhelming bulk of it consists of various vegetable oil - and thus also emulsifiers / chemical stabilizers etc to keep it all in one block and 'spreadable' 'straight from the fridge'.

To give ICBINB its due, the colour of yellow they've dyed it is quite appetising - it does, indeed, look like butter. This resemblance even extends to the point where you start melting it for cooking purposes; on heating it separates into whitish, more solid stuff that looks like - well, the milk solids as well as your thinner, clear yellow clarified butter / ghee material. On toast it tastes much like many other brands of margarine - personally I certainly CAN believe it's not butter in that respect, but it's not bad and is much better than most.

As I'm patiently biding my time for the day the latest health-scare about the dangers of consuming fake butter made out of emulsifed vegetable oils dyed yellow hit the press - when sales of Anchor butter and Lurpack and all the rest will hit an all-time high, as it's revealed that high saturated fat content or not, these 'natural' spreads were always better for you in comparison after all - I only buy this sort of stuff for cooking with. Often I get two packs for the price of one - one generally costs about the £1.20 mark; there's usually some sort of offer on at the supermarket. And on account of all those stabilizers, the spreads of this type I buy usually have a shelf-life until about the year 3000 or some such, so you can just stick them in the back of the fridge till they're needed. Sometimes a small amount of mould tries to grow on it. It never gets particularly far though. Whatever ingredients it's got in it appears to limit fungal growth.

It should be borne in mind that sometimes, instead of ICBINB what I buy is called 'Golden Churn' or 'You'd Butter Believe It' or 'Supermarket's Own Brand Of Butter-Like Substance' - but it's all exactly the same, really. (Again, bearing in mind - as Arthur Dent might say - 'almost, but not entirely unlike butter'.)

I mostly use it like my Mum used to use that unholy pale yellow gack spread 'Stork SB' in the 1970s - for doing baking on the cheap. I find it works extremely well for that. Also if you're using it as the basis for making a cheese sauce. Or if we've completely and absolutely run out of the proper cow-produced stuff from the butter dish.

On the basis of its usefulness for cooking, I've awarded ICBINB four stars.

Summary: Spreadable-from-fridge, butter-like material sold in tubs.